World Famous Architect Renzo Piano Comes to Columbia
by Stefie Gan
Some of the most amazing buildings are here in New York City, yet not many know about buildings other than the Empire State building.
November 19, 2007 was the grand opening of one of 8th Avenue’s most important buildings, The New York Times Building. A 52-story skyline with transparent water glass, double skinned walls, and a skin that changes colors can only be designed by Renzo Piano.
Renzo Piano, winner of the 1998 Pritzker Prize for Architecture, which is like a Nobel Prize in science, has designed many elegant and contemporary buildings. He made the California Academy of Science’s Green Museum look like a greenhouse that flowed with its elevated land environment and the National Center for Science and Technology (NeMo), located next to a port in Amsterdam, shaped like a giant boat. He also designed a shopping center in Germany with large sheets of glass and round lines that appear like a tunnel, a boat, or even a submarine. The list goes on, for he is renowned for his unconventional, yet simple creations.
Last year, he left his mark on New York City when he erected a stunning transparent skyline that stood out in its environment. The New York Times building went from being a traditional newspaper producing factory to a see-through modern building that allowed people to see the honesty that this newspaper production advocates. Piano wanted the building to share light unlike those buildings with opaque walls that cast huge rectangular shadows down on people; he calls those “selfish buildings.” He wanted the building to be open and inviting.
Surely, the sun is going to shine into the glass and overheat the building, so Piano ingeniously thought of creating another wall with ceramic rods to serve as “sun screen.” That skin also allows the building to take the color of its environment, thus reflecting different colors throughout the day. This quality makes the building unique and not the usual rectangular prism. Piano said, “I love the city and I wanted this building to be an expression of that. I wanted a transparent relationship between the street and the building. From the street, you can see through the whole building. Nothing is hidden. And like the city itself, the building will catch the light and change color with the weather. Bluish after a shower, and in the evening on a sunny day, shimmering red. The story of this building is one of lightness and transparency.”
He strives to integrate his buildings into their environment, yet emphasize their glory. The simple rectangular shapes of the Manhattan streets inspired him to design a building that would also reflect the simple lines. The building’s windows are drawn horizontally, spaced equally, and travel down like a column of a newspaper. How appropriate for a newspaper company!
An exceptional building, both artistic and environmentally conscious, stands on 8th Ave between 42nd and 43rd streets. It shouts Renzo Piano! More of Piano’s buildings are about to be erected very close to home, for Renzo Piano is coming to Columbia!
Although the issue of the Columbia expansion is highly controversial, and though we are not sure how far Columbia is expanding into West Harlem, one thing is for sure: we are going to have the most innovative and beautiful buildings designed by world famous Renzo Piano.
Piano and his team have already started making plans for this new project. He promises to abide by the height limit, not surpassing any of the existing buildings, but that won’t stop him from making multiple clear rectangular glass buildings that overlook the waterfront. He has four large blocks to work with, from 129th to 133rd street between Broadway and 12th Ave. This new campus is going to be almost as big as the one we have now, except the new campus will look more like the New York Times building.
His goals are to make streets more accessible to pedestrians, while keeping the original grid of the streets, to create larger sidewalks so that light can come into the area, make the view of the water more accessible, and add about 94,000 feet of open space for public use. The open space can be used for street fairs, picnics, art exhibitions, public seating, and University events. This area will transform into a beautiful, bright, and inviting hang out place.
So far, we are expected to have the Jerome L. Greene Science Center (a space to do research on finding treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other neurological diseases), homes for Columbia’s graduate students, and other buildings for math, science, and engineering by the year 2015. By 2030, we are expected to have buildings for biomedical research, nanotechnology, systems biology, and urban and populations studies, and more housing for graduate students and faculty. This Ivy League University is really pushing to have more space for the future scientific endeavors
Piano reflects that goal with steel and glass. He will develop the area into a modern city with many prisms of transparent buildings and greenhouses overhead. “Cities are bound to change,” says a man of the future, “You must accept it… You can’t embalm a city.”
Stefie Gan is a Barnard first-year.